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My two years at Fonterra was a real game of two halves. The first year was when the milk price was down, the farmers were hurting and getting things out the door was tough going.

EVERY KIWI SHOULD DO THE TIP TOP TOUR AND TRY THE UNFROZEN ICE CREAM DO IT NOW

In co-operatives, you’re extremely close to your shareholders / owners. You could feel the presence of Our Farmer Owners in every email and meeting room. There were plenty on Twitter letting us know what they thought and often asking where the value for them is in pretty much any aspect of Fonterra’s daily operations.

But it was cool, generally. Farmers are fair, and have tremendously dry humour. I felt I had to come up to speed on dairy farming quickly to have some kind of credibility, and was delighted when I started recognising stuff like calving, dried off cows and milking runs when driving through the country side.

The second year, the milk price was up, and we started Telling Our Story. That meant a heavy rotation TV campaign that was labelled 80s style in the NBR, and the most intense Facebook advertising I’d ever been part of.

Frankly, a fair portion of the country didn’t want to know. Our farmers loved it and the questions on how much we were spending on advertising largely dried up, despite all the news-hour and All Blacks match advertising.

With such a large footprint, it’s fair to say Fonterra was an issue-rich environment, and the community management could be pretty challenging. Lewis Road (who take Fonterra milk BTW), supplier terms, these ads that ran over the Christmas holidays, the situation in Australia… and that’s before water pollution became a big election issue. That was tough, and I spent many, many hours on my phone deep in Facebook discussion threads trying to explain, apologise and reach some understanding.

Despite the good intent, people were keener on action and results rather than key messages. That one will be a challenge for a while.

Fonterra is chock full of some of the most dedicated and smart people you’ll find anywhere. Farmers should rest assured there’s some serious midnight oil going in on their behalf, with great passion for taking the milk from one of the best places in the world to produce it, get the best out of it, sell the crap out of it around the world and get the best returns for the farmers. If we can get the environmental side of it right, NZ is going to win when Fonterra wins.

Meeting this NZ icon at Fieldays was big for me.

For me, I hope I helped get them in the game a bit more online and help the organisation be more comfortable with getting in tough conversations online. They were a bit of a soft target up until then, and it was time to do the basics right, like listen, respond and be a bit human. We also re-launched fonterra.com, going from a site with over 10k pages to an experience that’s a bit more user-friendly. The co-op has extremely ambitious plans to make digital a key facet of our biggest primary industry in some fashion, and there’s some really smart people setting about it. I wish them the very best.

A couple of years ago while messing around with the kids at the Hairy McLary park on Tauranga Waterfront, we saw a stingray lazily cruising along the rocks at low tide. He did several laps and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere.

Now we live here, and every time I park in Dive Crescent (it’s $3 a day, the kind of car park that invites uncharitable comparisons to Auckland), I walk along the same path looking for a ray.

This morning, I spotted another one. He / she was a lot more translucent than you can see in the video, with more blue. I was delighted.

Moving to Tauranga, we now live an easy ten minutes or so on the bike from the office. I wanted a flat pedal bike that’s more upright than the road bike, and that wouldn’t be out of place on the light gravel paths around here.

Luckily I had this – my father’s old Batavus Criterium. It’s a 531 steel road bike with older Shimano kit. Batavus is a Dutch company that usually makes yer upright town bikes, but also did these road bikes – Google tells me they were high quality builds.

It’s got a fairly laid back geometry and seemed a perfect candidate for flat bars and a general re-jig. It’s well worn but in good shape. Hopefully the sweet purple / green / yellow and white paintjob make it stealth and unappealing to anyone wanting to nick a bike at the supermarket.

Here’s the after:

Dad’s tubular wheel set had to go. They were excellent Weinmanns that rode very smoothly but I’d tried tubulars for city riding before and they’re a real PITA when you get a flat. In came a robust (code for heavy) aluminium wheelset I’d obtained for commuting, keeping the original rear cluster with a spacer, and a set of Panaracer Paselas.

The drop bars were replaced with a no-name flat bar (it can be hard to find a flat bar in road-bike-compatible diameters I discovered). These are a set of Shimano brake levers specifically designed for caliper brakes, they work really well.

As I’m stuck with downtube shifters, I don’t need the combo shifters/brakes. I didn’t bother putting a computer back on, I really like how bare bones it looks.

I got a set of 700x25s as I was a bit unsure how much clearance I’d have, but I could have easily gone to 28s. I reckon I could get a set of proper fenders in there too. And check out that badge!

The original plan for this bike was a fixed gear conversion, and that may still happen, these dropouts look likely to me.

Steel is real. It’s an extremely smooth ride and is working perfectly for the ride to work. I’m delighted, and stoked to get something so nice back in regular use.

This was on the return from a trip to Astrolabe Reef to scatter my uncle’s ashes.

It was an emotional and fascinating day. He was a mad keen diver from the days where you wore a rugby jersey rather than a wet suit and saying goodbye in such a beautiful spot with perfect seas and weather felt appropriate.

It was the first time I’d been out and talking to his diving mates about their trips there and how well the Rena crew had done to hit that itty bitty reef in the massive, vast ocean brought home what a fluke it was. A bloody shame. There was a coast guard boat out there keeping an eye on the area, it’s always there, along with a handful of fishing boats who seemed to be going all right, and a seal.

These dolphins joined us for a while on the way back. Apologies for portrait video but it seemed right for capturing the moment, and I was crapping myself about dropping the work phone over the side.

Here’s a ramble through 2015 expressed in the ‘photos I took on my phone’ medium. I’ve actually tried to take the DSLR actually out of its bag more often this year in order to get slightly nicer, slightly more considered photos happening, but that’s, erm, a work in progress. Anyway. Onward.

So, I work at Fonterra now. I got to go to Fieldays and met a long-time hero. Background woman spectacularly unimpressed.

This is my reality now.

We got cats, Sweetpea and Fred. Once the former stopped chewing through every phone charger cable in the house, we got on fine.

Proud moment.

Some neighbour’s plant. In my dream compound / Led Zep-style country estate, I would like a whole garden of these.

Fred.

Dorking out next to a sweet Falcon at The Mount.

Halloween decoration or Klansman? You be the judge.

My attempt to make a baked pancake turned out kind of weird, but kind of compelling.

Kids cricket at East Coast Bays. Have to say, I loved being a cricket dad kind of more than being a football dad, it’s much more relaxing watching kids sport in tee shirt and shorts with a shit flat white in your hands.

Joseph Parker Stalkipedia. He was a cool guy and later casually jumped on the bar’s guitar and piano and kicked arse.

Here’s an overdue update on the career situation – in May 2015 I left New Zealand Cricket for Fonterra. I wanted to wrap up the two years before it all disappears in a fond, summery haze.

Working in cricket was a bit of a dream come true – I thoroughly enjoyed being part of it and was constantly pinching myself that I was in the thick of it for a remarkable couple of years, comfortably two of our best ever, culminating in that world cup.

I was Digital Manager at NZC for that time, basically looking after the website and social media, as well as helping with PR and comms as required, including media management for the team on a couple of overseas tours and a handful of games in New Zealand.

Professionally, the highlights were:

Overhauling blackcaps.co.nz, both the front and back ends over the two seasons. We did the front end first, making the site mobile responsive and stripping it all back to make the content, text and words, the stars. Then in the second off season (the off season is when you do the ‘proper work’ in sport team!) we moved the CMS from a bespoke but vintage system we used to Umbraco, and went onto the new Microsoft Azure hosting, for all that sweet CWC traffic – there were a hair under a million page views on the site during the six weeks of the cup.

Being part of the online cricket community. People on Twitter love cricket, it’s the ideal sport to watch with the phone or the laptop. I wanted the national team’s account to be part of the conversation and show we were prepared to use Twitter as it’s meant to be, with personality, genuine engagement and to show off our fan’s love for the game (we used Storify to bring the social stuff into the website, hopefully to good effect.) It’s meant to be fun and I hope that my enjoyment came through.

There’s too many people to mention that helped make the BLACKCAPS community what it was – special mention to Jamie Bell at the NZC Museum, who tirelessly brought stats and history to life, as well as Jess, Ruth, Graeme, Andrew(s), Moog, Aotearoa XI, Toby, … it was a privilege to get to meet everyone at the ‘tweet ups’ and at the grounds.

Vine went really well for us, cricket kind of lent itself to the six second clips – here’s one from training before the CWC quarter final at the Basin, I was sifting around taking photos as per usual, when I was instructed to stand in the umpire’s position to see if any of the bowlers overstepped – and so got to see Kyle Mills, Grant Elliott, Corey Anderson and Dan Vettori bowl close up. Seeing professional athletes do their thing so close up was quite an experience.

I got to know one end of a video camera from the other, and how to edit. Kind of. I have much respect for the skill it takes to do this properly.

Launching the NZC mobile app – full credit for the technical stuff goes to Tim McConnell, Gus Pickering and team at NV Interactive’s Christchurch office, I highly recommend them and their work.

Cricket-wise, where do you start? How about

The drawn Test against England at Eden Park in 2013

Somehow ending up in a taxi from Dunedin airport wedged between Darren Sammy and Richie Richardson in late 2013

Beating India at Eden Park in the first Test in 2014 – then being at the Basin for Brendon’s 302. The drawn ODI v India was tremendous too

Being at the Basin for Kane Williamson’s first double century in the second Test v Sri Lanka in early 2015, and seeing the team come from way behind to win that one

CWC15 – Hagley, beating Australia at Eden Park, the Guptill quarter final, THAT BLOODY SEMI FINAL WIN and going to Melbourne for the final

In terms of results, the two trips to Bangladesh were not highlights, but the experience of traveling with the group and being part of it all will stick with me for a long time. Believe everything you read about the team being made of good people. It’s extremely well lead by Brendon and Mikes Hesson and Sandle and I was made to feel very welcome on those trips and whenever I was with the team back in NZ. I’ll miss that a lot.

Couple of snaps from Bangladesh – I was pretty green, but luckily these guys are real pros.

Cricket in New Zealand is run by some incredibly enthusiastic people, who give up their summers to bring you this magnificent game. It was very hard to leave the dream job, but the time was right to move on for me, it was nice to go out on the high of the world cup.

I would like to thank NZC’s James, Callum, Richard, Joanne and David, the cool kids at the back of the office-bus (and Nicki!) and everyone else there for putting up with me, as well as the support and opportunities. See you at the grounds in the summer.

As a twitter nerd, and a cricket nerd, when I got a job at New Zealand Cricket, getting to live-tweet BLACKCAPS matches was a bit of a nerd explosion. I’ve been at it a couple of years now, and have covered our matches from the office, my couch and cricket grounds around New Zealand and the world. Not to mention off the phone at a Kindy Trike-A-Thon. Ahem. Here’s a bit of a run down on what I’m trying to do with live-tweeting BLACKCAPS matches.

Being there
Ideally, you’re giving your fans something they can’t get somewhere else, like the team news first, early news on the pitch, the scene in the shed, what have you. It is hot? Is there a dirty great rain cloud on its way? Is there a rowdy section in the crowd making all the atmosphere? I want to tell you about anything you can’t see on the telly.

Find the right rhythmI’m aiming to keep folk on Twitter up to date, without annoying them. Some people are watching on TV, some are at the ground, some are following live scorecards and some are in the office or our and about following on Twitter.

With all that in mind, I want you to be able to follow the game through our account, alongside all the other people you follow on Twitter, with the tempo of the game in mind. We generally tweet about wickets, fours, milestones (50s, 100s, partnerships etc) and between all that, that’s usually plenty. Obviously if something happens you need to know about we’ll tell you, but there’s no minimum number of tweets.

If it’s a dull session, I’m not going to give you the blow by blow. But at the same time, if we need 12 to win in the last over to make our first World Cup final, you bet your arse I’ll let you know what’s happening in lengthy and in vivid.

ToneI’m aiming for impartial, but at the same time, we’re the @BLACKCAPS account. If someone makes a tremendous catch, takes a wicket, scores 300 etc, we’re going to celebrate it. At the same time, if we mess up, we’ll tell you but probably not go to town on it.

An example – I use our players Twitter handles when they come out to bat or bowl and take wickets / score milestones, but if they drop a catch or get out, I just type their name out, they don’t need to see that.

Apart from that, I think it’s OK to use humour, but not too much. I’m aiming for pithy.

Aim for first-ishWhen a wicket goes, you need to have the score, batsmen’s score, method of dismissal, bowler, catcher, etc, etc, etc at your fingertips in seconds. That’s a bit to get in a hurry.

You want to be swift, but I don’t put pressure on myself to be first with the news. There’s ALWAYS someone faster on the internet, and people at the ground / watching or listening at home can see what’s happened for themselves after all. It’s better to be near the front of the pack and right than first and wrong.

Also, you want to apologise and fix things when you stuff up. Our fans have saved me a number of times, I find it’s best to embrace and make friends with correctors, in general (!).

The crowd is better than you
The internet is funnier than we are, has great photos and better stats. It’s a team sport, Twitter, and we can cover what’s happening better as a group, recognise and reward our loyal fans and have some fun together, so we embrace and hit the retweet button a lot.

It makes our feed better and hopefully our fans get a kick out of it. If your gameday tweet deck doesn’t have mentions, match and team hashtags and Twitter lists of your fans handy for retweeting, you should set that shit up now.

Don’t forget to look upRight? No matter if you’re sat in the media box, or in front of the TV, with the laptop open it’s easy to get distracted by Twitter, updating the website, the news, etc etc etc. While keeping everything ticking on your channels is what you’re there for, you do your best job by being very aware of what’s happening on the park. I can be bad at this, to be fair.

Sean’s based in Melbourne and works with a heap of teams and leagues with their digital and social efforts, as well as producing a cottage industry in podcasts. When I started my current role I found the pods (casts?) a treasure trove of tips and ideas, so I was stoked to be asked on.